What's to be said about Romania? E.M. Cioran, a Romanian himself, called it a place "where people howl at funerals." Imagine--traveling through the Carpathians in a coat of snarling wolves. We dreamed once we were in Romania, and when we awoke the hair had grown thick on our pillow. The peasants of Romania in their high conical hats rue the fact that their country looks like a fat fish stranded on the banks of the Black Sea, and raising high their pitchforks they die in jet ski accidents. Separated from Bulgaria by the blue Danube, the Romanian half of which is bright orange, the people of Giurgiu regurgitate folk tales they make up on the spot. There is something high above Romania that is sacred, and something to the left of Romania that is Hungary. In the Transylvanian Alps you can blow an alphorn, they're sexually liberal there. When we think of Romania we think of Soul II Soul albums played backwards, of electrical tape wrapped the whole way around cars to keep them from falling apart, of bloodless elves brawling in the bars of Cluj-Napoca, which is really hopping during Spring Break. But most of all we think of her, our sophomore vampire, our inamorata, our hole in one on the miniature golf course in the fabled burning forest below Moldoveneau.
